One of Us Buried by Johanna Craven (year 2 reading books TXT) 📕

In the half-light, he pulled my shift up over my head, his lips moving over the pale skin of my shoulders, coarse fingers finding the warmth between my legs. I heard myself murmur, and pulled him down over me so he might trap the sound within his lips.

Was I marking myself as a loose woman? Perhaps. But the rest of the world couldn’t see inside this room. The only man who knew this side of me was to disappear on the seas. I dug my fingers into the hot skin on the back of his neck, wanting to mark him as I was marking myself.

And his broad, tanned body was over mine; covering me, consuming me, filling me. I felt that barrier around him splinter as he groaned into my ear, worked his lips along my neck. Felt his control slipping and shattering as we moved together in the hatched sunlight spilling across the bed. The shame was there at the back of my mind. But I felt far too alive to care.

I lay in the shadows, feeling his heart beating against my ear. His arms were warm against my bare skin. I felt like all the things Reverend Marsden had accused us of being.

And I thought of her then, beautiful Sophia, with her doe eyes and her perfect curls, and I felt her husband’s body shift beneath me.

Look what I had become.

I was always doomed to fail. I had been playing opposing games – on one hand, challenging myself not to give in, not to fall for him, not to succumb and be that weak, indecent concubine the female register had labelled me as. And at the same time, I had sought power. Tempted Blackwell to forget his wife, his God, his morality. Somewhere along the line I had fallen in love.

A losing game.

Blackwell’s breathing grew steady and rhythmic, his chest rising and falling beneath my head.

I watched him in his sleep. I wanted to hold him, love him, take away the guilt and regret he refused to speak of. Take away the memories of that bloodstained cottage near Squire’s inn. Perhaps that made me as bad as him. Perhaps those men who had fallen deserved more than for the memory of them to be taken away.

I climbed from the bed, careful not to wake him. I had to leave. I was due back at the tavern. And I needed to leave Grant’s house before anyone realised I was here.

I took my shift from the floor and slid it over my head. I had left a thread of coppery hair on Blackwell’s pillow. I stared at it as I laced my stays.

I felt an emptiness inside me. Now the line had been crossed, what did we have left for each other? He had Sophia, I had Arthur Flynn. I felt certain that when I stepped out of that room, I would never see him again.

I crossed the room, each step carefully placed to avoid the creak of the floorboards. I slipped out into the hall without looking back, that coil of red hair stark upon his pillow.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I crept down the stairs, each footstep carefully placed to avoid making a sound. Eyes down, I headed towards the empty servants’ quarters. But as I stepped into the hallway, I came face to face with a tall, well-built man, whose grey eyes flickered in surprise. A regular fixture at the Whaler’s Arms.

We stared at each other for a long second. I knew there was no need for questions. He had seen me come down from Blackwell’s room.

There was a silent understanding between us that this was to remain wordless. Unspoken. I turned abruptly, and disappeared out of the house.

The shame gathered over me as I made my way back to the tavern. I had been caught as a concubine. Caught behaving as what Marsden’s register had made me out to be.

But beneath the shame, there was a hint of relief. The afternoon I had spent with Blackwell would allow me to move on. Allow us both to. He, back to England where Sophia was waiting. And I could marry Arthur Flynn, without feeling caught in an unfinished chapter. I knew such a marriage was the only way I would ever have a future.

The next afternoon, I went to see that future. Flynn had sent one of his farmhands to collect me in the trap and I sat in the back of the wagon, winding up towards the edge of Bridge Street where the colony met the wilderness.

Flynn’s home was a great sandstone monolith that seemed to grow from the paddocks, the distant turquoise of the sea visible beyond the hill. Behind the house, a patchwork of fencing outlined the sheep-dotted farmland. There was a barren, eerie beauty to the place, with its oceanic fields glittering in the heat haze, gnarled skeletons of trees stark against the fierce blue of the sky. I felt a flicker of nerves at becoming the lady of such a vast and unfamiliar property. But for the first time since I had climbed off the Norfolk, I was able to see a future that did not make me cower at its misery.

The farmhand offered me his hand to help me out of the trap and I climbed down, my boots crunching on the brittle brown grass. Ann was waiting outside the house to meet me.

“Mr Flynn’s asked me to bring you into the parlour.”

I followed her across a wide veranda and across the dark polished floorboards of Flynn’s entrance hall. She knocked lightly on the parlour door and I entered at Flynn’s invitation. As I stepped into the room, he put down his teacup and rose from his armchair. He turned to look at Ann.

“Please leave us.”

She bobbed a quick curtsey and pulled the door closed behind